Projection, in cartography, systematic representation on a flat surface of features of a curved surface, as that of the Earth. Such a representation presents an obvious problem but one that did not disturb ancient or medieval cartographers. Only when the voyages of exploration stimulated production of maps showing entire oceans, hemispheres, and the whole Earth did the question of projection come to the fore. Mercator produced the simplest and, for its purposes, the best solution by in effect converting the spherical Earth into a cylinder with the open ends at the poles; this cylinder was then opened to form a plane surface. East–west and north–south directions could be represented with fidelity, and the distortions in size became gross only near the polar regions (rendering Greenland, for example, disproportionately large). The Mercator projection is still widely used, especially when north–south dimensions are of chief importance. Many other projections are used, for example, the conic projection, drawn from a point directly above the North or South Pole. All projections involve some degree of distortion, and those showing the entire Earth involve a large degree.

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graphic representation, drawn to scale and usually on a flat surface, of features—for example, geographical, geological, or geopolitical—of an area of the Earth or of any other celestial body. Globes are maps represented on the surface of a sphere. Cartography is the art and science...

type of map projection introduced in 1569 by Gerardus Mercator. It is often described as a cylindrical projection, but it must be derived mathematically. The meridians are equally spaced, parallel vertical lines, and the parallels of latitude are parallel, horizontal straight lines, spaced farther...

...longitude on the globe. His grid gives a visual impression of Earth’s spherical surface and also, to a limited extent, preserves the proportionality of distances. The more sophisticated of these map projections, using circular arcs to represent both parallels and meridians, anticipated later area-preserving projections. Ptolemy’s geographical work was almost unknown in Europe until about 1300,...